Darfur

This is Darfur since 2003, when the war began. Some say it was genocide, others call it ethnic cleansing. It was death at a large scale, mass slaughter, rape, destruction. For one and a half year this continued, from early 2003 to mid 2004. You won’t see pictures. The world was not interested. Afghanistan and Iraq made the front page. Sudan and Darfur were miscellaneous news. The Security Council refused to put Darfur on its agenda. There was no action to prevent further killings. There was only a little increase in the humanitarian assistance to the people who fled away, refugees who crossed the border with Chad and internal displaced persons who were able to reach the bigger towns, El Geneina, El Fashir and Nyala.

Seventeen months later the visitors arrived: politicians, accompanied by press, alerted by relief workers, NGOs and by leaders of rebel movements in Darfur. The Security Council passed a resolution, demanding that the killings be stopped and the killers be disarmed. But it was late, very late, too late. International action began only after the number of people chased away from their homes had reached the figure of one and a half million. How many people had been killed, nobody knows. Estimates are between 70 and 300,000. It is guess work. There were no witnesses, no pictures. We only have the numerous stories of the survivors, told and re-told to reporters and human rights observers who visited them often only one year after the ordeal. All these stories lead to a general picture: planes flying over villages, throwing bombs, helicopter gun-ships spreading fear, followed by militia on camel and horseback burning down the village, chasing away all villagers, killing at random, and then riding away on their animals, vanishing in the distance. That is the picture arising from the stories. There are no other pictures, no TV images, no photographs.

Maybe that is why the world’s public opinion was not alerted. Maybe that also was the reason why politicians waited one and a half year until they took action. It made the world an accomplice: the perpetrators were allowed to continue raping, looting and killing. Mid last year there was a world outcry, a global protest against what many called genocide and others a mass violation of human rights. At last. But it was a little hypocritical, because the killings could have been stopped earlier, if not prevented. And the action taken after the outcry was not only too late, but also too little. The killings in Tawila, Labado, Hamada, Khor Abeche and Aro Sharow took place after the world’s leaders had decided that action was necessary to halt them. And again, there were no witnesses. The same pattern as in 2003.